Search

I went out today to check on one of our most struggling baby fields. It’s been a cold and tough winter for these young plants. Baby fields are fields that we planted last fall and have not been harvested yet.

These little baby grass plants are slowly…painfully…growing up out of the ground. We planted right into the old stand of grass seed this fall, which is not how we commonly grow grass seed. However as Mother Nature doesn’t always leave you options, this wet fall closed the window on conventional planting for us. This is a risk for us, but we are hoping that once spring comes, this dead looking field behind me, look s a lot more green!Come on little guys! You can do it!

I finally sat down and took a deep breath today. We are in the heart of harvest here and there’s a part of me that thrives on all that we accomplish in a day. And there’s a part of me that’s just exhausted and wishes I could sleep for days. I am harvest excited and I am harvest tired.

Catching a quick lunch in the shade of our seed truck.

There’s a part of me that sees harvest as dragging on forever then there’s a part of me that laughs at that part because we aren’t even close to being done. There’s a part of me that gets so excited with good yields and very frustrated with fields that aren’t producing. Because for us, this is it, this is when it all either happens or doesn’t for our whole year.

A very rough, very awful cabbage field….wondering where the crop is? So were we unfortunately.

Harvest has been long, long days, long nights. Days filled with paperwork that still has to get finished, bills that still need to be paid. Logistics of who goes where and what needs to get done, what fields to irrigate, what fields to harvest…a constant triage of priorities. Then evening comes, the boys in tow, and dinners and family time out in the field. Which moves us straight into nights of infant cries, and the many needs of a toddler at 3am. We are smiling, because that crazy spirit in us, that now 4 generations of harvest, heat, dust and dirt…we just can’t shake it.

And the truth is, I already know I’ll be sitting in the same pickup, watching the same beautiful sunset next year, looking forward to the harvest on the horizon. I am continually excited at the potential, and feeling of a years worth of hard work, just hoping it all pays off. This farming thing, it isn’t easy, it’s tough on levels that you put your heart and soul into. It’s something that maybe only a farmer understands and only a farmer would sign up for. It’s our life though, at times it’s beautiful, at times hard…but either way here we go again for another day!

Here in Oregon, we grow over 250 different crops. So it’s no wonder that in our soil this year we have 10 different crops growing. And while in the next three months they will all get harvested, currently everything is at all different stages. Some crops are just getting planted, some starting to flower, some are pollinating, and others are already ready to be harvested!

So here is your photo tour of our farm and the 10 crops we are raising.

First stop the grasses, both perennial and tall fescue are grown on our farm.

Next, vegetables seeds. We are raising red cabbage seed…

Swiss chard seed…

And radish seed.

Then finally, all the crops you can eat!!! Wheat…

Peas…

Hazelnuts…

Squash…

And Green beans…

So there you have it! And yes, to answer the question I most often get asked, we are really busy! And most of the time, we are loving it!